


Rescue

by puckity



Category: Lost
Genre: Depression, F/M, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Misogyny, Rescue AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-05
Updated: 2005-08-05
Packaged: 2018-02-07 13:17:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1900341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/puckity/pseuds/puckity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Six years on the island and a rescue is finally happening. Only Jack isn’t as happy as he should be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rescue

**Author's Note:**

> My last LOST fic; written in 2005 before everything about the series got stupid.
> 
> Beta’d by my old editing triad: Emmy, Amber and Rachel.
> 
> You can also follow me on [Tumblr](http://puckity.tumblr.com/).

In the middle of the celebration, no one noticed when Jack kissed Charlie.

While everyone danced—or perhaps more accurately—while everyone stumbled around the bonfire, Jack watched six years of his life go up in flames.

\---

Jack didn’t know whose idea the bonfire was. If he had to make a guess, he would have said Sawyer’s. Maybe Hurley’s. When Sayid had heard the first strands of a rescue signal, he went to Jack. They kept it quiet for close to a week, not wanting to start any sort of mad frenzy. The last thing they needed was a riot. But with each transmission, Sayid was letting more hope into his heart, and Jack could tell. The most dangerous kind of hope is the hope that is born out of absolute desperation, when the expectation for it died too long ago to recall.

It was late afternoon, with clouds seeping into the sky and graying the light, when it happened. Out of the static a flat voice came:

“Flight 815.”

Sayid looked at Jack and neither of them moved.

“Flight 815. Are we speaking to the survivors of Oceanic Flight 815?” The numbers that had haunted Jack’s nights that first year sounded foreign now, like something he was remembering from another world.

Jack watched Sayid as that strange look of disbelief and ecstasy illuminated his dark features. When he grabbed the transmitter, Jack thought he looked like some kind of demon.

“Yes! Yes, we are survivors of Oceanic Flight 815! I, I am Sayid…” In the space of a few seconds, Sayid seemed to have forgotten his name. “Oh, no I am here with Jack Shepard! Dr. Jack Shepard! We are all here, all of us, at the beach, the caves, we are all here!”

As Sayid rambled the voice began to ask questions.

How many?

Where on the island were they?

Could they get everyone out a mile into the ocean?

Jack let Sayid have his revelation. Jack let him shout, because soon enough everyone would be shouting right along with him. And at that point, Jack didn’t know if he would be able to take it anymore. Jack let Sayid be happy, for both of them.

\---

No one asked anything. No one wondered how or why. They could ask all that later, when they were on the ship or plane or whatever would be waiting for them a mile off shore. They could ask later, when they were sitting in their homes, surrounded by everyone who had believed they were six years dead. Now, they could afford later.

After the announcement was made, everyone changed. No one talked about boars or water or staying alive. Locke talked about learning Mandarin Chinese and visiting the Imperial City. Sawyer told him that he was the craziest son of a bitch he’d ever met for even thinking about going near another plane. Kate talked about turning herself in. She said that life was too short to spend it running away. Charlie told Claire that he was going to buy her a house where Aaron could have the normal life that came up every so often in pre-rescue island conversation.

Jack didn’t talk about anything. Something had changed. Just one thing. And everyone was different. The people Jack had lived with, the world that became his, had vanished. It was like everyone had left. Like they had all died. Or maybe it was like he died, because suddenly, everyone seemed to have forgotten that he was still there.

\---

Jack didn’t know whose idea the bonfire was. But it was Locke’s idea to make crude alcohol. Something about honey and fermenting, Jack hadn’t really been paying that much attention. He had been too busy pretending that he was happy. Too busy wondering why he wasn’t. He was making lists, gathering and sorting, being the leader on auto-pilot.

He walked from person to person, asking if they had everything, if they needed anything. Reminding them how the evacuation was going to go tomorrow. When he had made the rounds twice, feeling like the doctor he had been before more now than ever, he decided to pack up his office. The hospital, as everyone had called it. When he started to head back towards the caves he heard Sawyer call after him in a harmless tone.

“You just can’t stop being our damn Messiah, can you Doc?”

In what had been his makeshift office for six years—the place that had seen routine check-ups and surgeries all the same—Jack thought about actually having an office again. He thought about a big black leather chair on wheels and all his medical credentials hanging on a white wall.

When Kate walked in, it wasn’t that he didn’t notice it. He just ignored it. When she wrapped her arms around him from behind, he didn’t ask why. When she stepped back and took off all her clothes, tossing them around the office he had just cleaned, he looked at her. When she leaned down and kissed him, he found himself staring at an oddly shaped piece of moss that was growing on the cave wall. She pulled away and bit her lip.

“I just didn’t want to not have ever done that.” For a second, Jack imagined that she actually had some shame in her.

“Jack, you’d better say something.” She had pulled her face back just enough to look him in the eye. “Or else I don’t think I can be held accountable for my actions.”

A pause, barely enough to know if he was going to say something or not, was all the time she gave him. Then she was shoving him down onto the pebbly ground, and she was forcing off his jeans, and then his underwear. She pushed herself over him and started to move. It never occurred to her that she was doing all the work. Jack kept looking at the moss, and he let his body do what it wanted. He didn’t fight it, or pretend it wasn’t happening.

Because his body didn’t care who it was, and Jack accepted that. It was over quickly, just as Jack could have predicted. Kate was moaning and panting and grabbing Jack’s shirt—which he was still wearing—and Jack was silent. When he came, he didn’t even close his eyes. He wouldn’t, because he knew that if he did he would see that impish face, those laughing eyes. That person who had made him miserable, and made him hate himself. That person who now was making this rescue a joke for him. If he closed his eyes, he would hear that thick accent murmuring his name over and over, like Kate was now. If he closed his eyes, then he would have to imagine that it was those hands, with the tarnished costume rings, that were clawing at his chest. It wasn’t like that wasn’t what he imagined every time he jerked off, when he told everyone he was going into the jungle to gather some fruit. But right now it seemed too cruel to torture himself anymore. After all, his body didn’t care that it was Kate and not Charlie.

That was a pathetic lie, but it was the only one he could manage to tell himself and actually believe.

\---

Afterwards, Kate wanted to cuddle. She burrowed herself against Jack’s shirt, and put her arms across his chest, like she owned him now.

“Jack?” She sounded like a little girl, and Jack wanted to go and scrub himself with a pumice stone. He didn’t answer, because he was still looking at that moss.

“I love you.”

It wasn’t like Jack hadn’t been listening. He heard it. He was just ignoring it. Kate seemed to finally give up on him talking, and closed her eyes.

“Kate?”

“Yeah?” She didn’t even look up at him, like it wasn’t worth the effort.

“I hate you.”

\---

Everything that everyone wasn’t taking was thrown into that bonfire. Blankets, clothes, little inventions that people had learned to forget weren’t from a store. They were burning their life on the island, making an effigy to everything that had been good enough while they were stranded but was worthless now. Like some half-savage creatures they danced wildly, defying a God that had finally deemed it time for them to get off this sandpile. Jack thought that this was what the missionaries must have seen, right before they murdered the priests and forced the uncivilized peoples of the world to convert.

“Hey mate, you look like you’re actually not happy to be leaving.” Charlie might have been tipsy, but since he was always a bit off-kilter Jack couldn’t been sure.

“Why wouldn’t I be happy about leaving?” Jack made no effort to sound convincing. He knew he was being ungrateful, because aside from Kate, Charlie was the only person who remembered that there was actually a Jack still on the island.

“Dunno. But you look like you’re about to cry.” Charlie seemed to think the idea of Jack crying was rather funny. Jack gave a hard smile.

“Hold on now, Jack. What’s wrong? Did something happen? I mean, you look like you’ve died, mate.”

“Maybe I did.” Jack couldn’t decide whether he wanted Charlie to hear that or not, so he mumbled. He looked around, watching everyone pass by like he was nothing more than a figment of someone’s imagination. The happiness, and absolute bliss of the masses. It was like mania, like delusions and dementia. Only Jack knew that he wasn’t losing his mind.

In the middle of the celebration, no one noticed when Jack kissed Charlie. This time he closed his eyes. He pressed against the rough skin of those lips, the clash of stubble making Jack’s cheek feel like it was on fire. He tasted the warm breath, the hint of honey. He felt a hand grip his shirt, and for a second he thought he was going to get punched in the face. Then it bunched in the same fabric that Kate had been tearing at a few hours ago. He heard a groan, muffled but distinct. The contact broke because one of them needed air, and then Jack heard it.

“Jack.” A whisper, a plea, a secret. Jack had everything he ever imagined, and now it was real. He pulled his face back just enough to look Charlie in the eye.

“I just didn’t want to not have ever done that.” Jack didn’t wait for the answer. He didn’t need to know.

\---

Jack had never particularly loved the water. And being stranded on an island for six years usually makes someone hate it. But not Jack, not tonight.

On the horizon a storm was coming. He could see the lightening, watching it outline the low clouds like some macabre shadow play. But above him the heavens were open.

Stars that disappear in a city.

But no moon.

Jack was sure that if he asked Locke he would hear a story about bad omens. All the things that you can get away with in the absence of moonlight.

Jack was already up to his waist in the water. It was so warm. That was one thing that Jack couldn’t get used to. The water that Jack swam in—at summer camp or the few vacations he had ever gone on—had never been that warm. And it was so calm. Like it almost wasn’t there at all. The water rippled around his collarbone.

He had been careful to keep his arm out of the water. The barrel was cold pressed against his temple. For a second he thought about the warm water and the cold metal, and thought about how unnatural this all was. He never could have drowned himself. He didn’t have the patience. Not anymore. Jack looked across the ocean, unable to see beyond the darkness. Something was out there. Salvation. Freedom. Life. Rescue. But Jack couldn’t see it.

What Jack could see was the blue that the water around him had turned to. It was the color of Charlie’s eyes and Jack imagined that he would actually be able to drown in them now. He closed his own eyes, preserving that final thought forever.

That night, Jack walked into the ocean and disappeared.

\---

As the bonfire dimmed to a smolder, Charlie thought he heard a noise, something breaking in the night. It was probably thunder. But Charlie couldn’t be sure.


End file.
